A German pensioner was caught by customs officers in Barcelona with £277,000
worth of cocaine stashed in his underwear.

The 160 canisters of the drug, which had been sewn into his underpants, were discovered after customs workers were alerted to his suspiciously large behind.

One official said: "He wasn't a big man but he had a very bulky rear end. Then when he sat down it was like he was sitting on eggshells. His backside and his legs looked like they belonged to a weightlifter."

Officers found 6.6kg of cocaine stored inside the neoprene shorts he wore underneath his jeans. The 65-year-old German, who flew into Barcelona from South America, was arrested and jailed.

The customs officer added: "We've seen all sorts of stunts but the big pants were a first for us." It is just one of a series of imaginative smuggling attempts in recent months.

On Monday one man was arrested after he stuffed 25kg of cocaine into 407 courgettes and attempted to get to New York. He was intercepted at the airport of Las Americas, Santa Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

Meanwhile a more substantial, if unimaginatively packaged loot was rumbled in north Ecuador on the same day. Six tonnes of the brown paper-packaged drug were seized during an operation in Esmeraldas, which saw four people arrested.

In June the Mexican navy seized more than a tonne of cocaine that had been hidden in the carcases of 20 frozen sharks.

And in June last year inmates at a Brazilian prison were found to be using pigeons to fly drugs in from the outside.

Guards at the jail near Sao Paulo had noticed a rise in the amount of narcotics being seized from prisoners and were mystified until they spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to remain airborne.

They found that inmates at the prison in Marilia had been training the birds to fly in goods with the aid of small pouches on their backs, avoiding the hi-tech security faced by visitors.